Teaching Listening

In teaching listening, there are two types which are similar to reading. Those are extensive and intensive. Extensive listening involve an activity which the students will probably like and enjoy. The students also do not need to listen in a listening room ar at school. They can listen it at home or other places. Also, the material should be fun and enjoyable. It is suggested to appy both listening and reading. Therefore, the teacher should prepare an audio and the copy of the text.

In utilizing the audio material while teaching intensive reading, the teacher will find some advantages and disadvantages. Since the audio was recorded and sound by native speakers, the students will experiment with different voices, the dialect, pronunciation, and intonation. Also, the audio helps the teacher to decrease the rigidity because some of the audios indicate different situations. The students can also get new vocabularies. In addition, they are cheap and easy to use. On the other hand, it is only suitable to conduct in small classes because the teacher can control that all students can listen to it clearly and well. Regarding to the students’ ability, the slow learner will not be able to follow the audio. They often lost some sentences in the conversatition. Worstly, they do not get the meaning and the conversation at all.

In the classroom, the teachers often ask the students whether they already got the message or not. However, some of them don’t. Thus, the teacher let them to run the audio. It means that the teacher ask them whether they would like to play it, pause it, repeat it, or stop it. This role is called machine operator. In some schools with good facilities, they students do not need the teacher to play, repla, pause or stop the audio. They can do it by themselves since the school facilitate them with their own pseronal machines such as listening room. The teacher are still able to control them by doin lockstep. All of those explanations deal with the teachers’ roles such as organizers. They have to tell the students the today’s learning objective. In the end of the session, the teacher should give a feedback or he can hold the students to have peer-feedback or group feedback. The other role is a prompter.

Live listening may become interesting for the students. The teacher will speak or read loudly in the classroom so it is like the teacher audio. The teacher can also tell a story and it is very helpful because the teacher can control the flow and interact with the students. Interviews can be conducted since it also encourages the students to have their own questions. Conversations is the most common technique used by English teachers.

Besides utilizing the audio recording, the teacher can also use film and video. However, the teacher should select the appropriate video which will lead their focus to the sound, not the visual. The teacher can conduct it in some ways such as fast forwayd, silent viewing, freeze frame, and partial viewing.  Also, media can be provides through pictureless listening to the language or the music or sound effect, picture or speech, and subtitles. The last way is the most-waited by the students. However, the teacher should aware to use it appropriately such as in the last time of playing the recording.

Some sequence are provided such us presnting someone whom the students do not know before and let them ask him. The second is by asking them to match a picture in regular arrangement. The third is pretending being someone who are called by three other people. Those people will leave messages for him. Generally, the teacher will ask them to pay a role and in the end, the teacher will ask them about the message. The most interesting activity is playing a song or music for them. Then, give them the lyrics and they need to complete it.

A Commonly Found Question

Question	:	In listening, we often make a doubt about the words that are spoken by the speaker. The sounds may be different from what we understand and it will leads to misunderstanding. Regarding to this problem, what is your solution?
Answer	:	What we can do is paying attention to the context regarding to the speech equation. Therefore, we are suggested to get the meaning from the whole conversation not a single word to avoid misunderstanding.

Critical Analysis

Similar to reading skill, listening skill is complicated to master. The students should be able to catch the meaning of what the speaker says. However, they tend to catch the meaning through every single word. If they skip a word, they will automatically be confused and think that thay do not get the meaning at all. Therefore, the teacher’s role here is to remind them that the meaning cannot only be gotten by translating each word. They have to listen the speaking as a whole speaking not as a group or words. Therefore, the teacher should habitualize them through practice. Many ways can be done to facilitate the learners such us presenting music or videos. The most important thing is that how the teacher chooses the material and how he attracts them through the material. In an isolated area where the teachers have minimum facilities, he can utilize his voice through telling stories, etc.

References

Harmer, Jeremy. 2007a. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Malaysia: Pearson Education Limited.

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